Diagnose Decline in Successful Orders

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a data scientist's skills in marketplace analytics, causal reasoning, metric framework design, and experimentation for diagnosing a decline in successful orders.

Diagnose Decline in Successful Orders

Company: DoorDash

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Analytics & Experimentation

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

You are a Data Scientist at a food-delivery marketplace. In one geographic market, the number of **successful orders** has declined over the past 4 weeks. Assume a **successful order** is an order that is placed, accepted, delivered, and not later refunded or canceled due to marketplace failures. The business wants to know: 1. **What could be causing the decline?** 2. **What metrics and slices would you examine first?** 3. **How would you distinguish between demand-side, supply-side, operational, and measurement issues?** 4. **What analyses and A/B tests would you propose to validate root causes and improve the metric?** Please structure your answer as if you were leading the investigation for a marketplace product team. You may assume the platform has the following relevant data available: - Customer sessions / app opens - Search and menu views - Add-to-cart and checkout events - Order placement events - Merchant acceptance / rejection - Dasher assignment and delivery times - Cancellations, refunds, and support contacts - Pricing, fees, promos, ETAs, and stockout signals - Customer, merchant, and dasher attributes by market and time In your answer, define a metric framework for diagnosing the drop. Consider factors such as: - Seasonality, holidays, weather, outages, and local events - Changes in demand, conversion, merchant availability, courier supply, ETAs, pricing, and service quality - Mix shift across customer segments, cuisines, merchants, or time of day - Data quality / instrumentation issues - Short-term fixes versus longer-term product interventions Finally, describe one or two experiments you would run, including: - Primary metric - Guardrail metrics - Likely sources of bias or confounding - How you would interpret ambiguous results

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a data scientist's skills in marketplace analytics, causal reasoning, metric framework design, and experimentation for diagnosing a decline in successful orders.

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Oct 21, 2025, 12:00 AM
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You are a Data Scientist at a food-delivery marketplace. In one geographic market, the number of successful orders has declined over the past 4 weeks.

Assume a successful order is an order that is placed, accepted, delivered, and not later refunded or canceled due to marketplace failures. The business wants to know:

  1. What could be causing the decline?
  2. What metrics and slices would you examine first?
  3. How would you distinguish between demand-side, supply-side, operational, and measurement issues?
  4. What analyses and A/B tests would you propose to validate root causes and improve the metric?

Please structure your answer as if you were leading the investigation for a marketplace product team.

You may assume the platform has the following relevant data available:

  • Customer sessions / app opens
  • Search and menu views
  • Add-to-cart and checkout events
  • Order placement events
  • Merchant acceptance / rejection
  • Dasher assignment and delivery times
  • Cancellations, refunds, and support contacts
  • Pricing, fees, promos, ETAs, and stockout signals
  • Customer, merchant, and dasher attributes by market and time

In your answer, define a metric framework for diagnosing the drop. Consider factors such as:

  • Seasonality, holidays, weather, outages, and local events
  • Changes in demand, conversion, merchant availability, courier supply, ETAs, pricing, and service quality
  • Mix shift across customer segments, cuisines, merchants, or time of day
  • Data quality / instrumentation issues
  • Short-term fixes versus longer-term product interventions

Finally, describe one or two experiments you would run, including:

  • Primary metric
  • Guardrail metrics
  • Likely sources of bias or confounding
  • How you would interpret ambiguous results
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